I Would Rather Have Had an Ugly Wife

Greying, wrinkled, frayed, and undone. Daughters, long ago married off, come by occasionally to check on him, make sure he isn't dead like their beautiful mother. They find him in the exact same position in the room at the back of the house, barely large enough be a closet, as though he morphed into a gargoyle, doomed to guard the cherry blossom scented room for eternity. Those girls never speak to him. Nothing to say. In return, he won't say a word. A mutual agreement, silently made, stands to dictate these societal rules. Every eclipse or so one of the girls will ask her husband, "I wonder what he does all day, sitting in that sad little room." Neither venture any explanation, because both know, as do the crickets who try to mind their own business in the grass, what transpires when the sun waxes. The old man cries, agonized and vengeful. Often he demands "Why! Why! Why!" but nature can't expound. Pounding his fist on the cold cherry wood floor, he idolizes the fractured picture of his stunning wife and the burnt copy of confession. The old man sits in front of his divorced katana companion and cries.